Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo • Hacker News Board

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#91

Post by jules » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:36 PM UTC

jwhitlark wrote: post #56

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, anyone willing to treat employees horribly, operates cheaper. If using trafficked chinese women were legal, the owner willing to be a psychopath will put his competition under. Capitalism is an inherently unstable system and only works with good regulation. I think a capitalist system only works as well as its regulation.

Well, a truly unregulated market approximates a war. Just look at the early history of trader/pirates. This doesn't mean capitalism is unstable; it's lowest energy state is the state of nature. Unrestricted warfare is bad for profits, as well as general wellbeing. The trick is to add regulation without adding unnecessary friction, and finding an approximate solution to the free rider problem.

An unregulated market doesn't mean that you can shoot people. Each transaction must be voluntary. Capitalism is not the same as anarchy.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#92

Post by sageikosa » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

crimsonalucard wrote: post #47

sageikosa wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, forward towards what? The "perfect society"?

Towards a more balanced distribution of corporate resources/wages/profits leading to a more healthy economy.

Balanced by what standard? Don't really need an answer, most of my posts are just to let other individuals know that at one time there were critical thinkers on HN. I've been downvoted so often for asking questions and answering questions (rather than rambling on through rhetorical platitudes and high-school level history lessons) that I actually take perverse pleasure in seeing how many downvotes I can get.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#93

Post by kevmo » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:37 PM UTC

jacobush wrote: post #78

kevmo wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I largely agree. However, I think it is important for regulations to generally (not always) be structured on a sliding scale that is directly related to company size, i.e. the bigger the business, the more regulations it becomes subject to. Otherwise, regulations become a cudgel with which small businesses are beaten down because only the big established players can afford to comply. In today's age of regulatory capt…

Easy one. Just outsource to smaller and smaller companies. It's turtles all the way down! Somewhere down there, sick leave and other frivolities start to look more and more quaint.

Yeah, I am just talking about how you start to generally approach the problem.

Government is always going to be an ongoing, adaptive process with back-and-forth struggles and adjudication between interested parties. Maybe we'll evolve into a more inherently cooperative species in the future, but you're definitely right about what the first business response is. :)

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#94

Post by _jal » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:38 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #89

wfo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are smart, they should: right now they have a lot of power in the workplace because there is demand for them. This is a problem tech business owners have identified: programmers have too much power on the job relative to their bosses. They require good wages, they require too many benefits, they complain and sue when they are sexually harassed, they demand equity and to be treated well and refuse to accept th…

Your comment shows the real divide on unionization and its not about someone's political ideology, its fundamentally about how they view the profession. If like you said programmers should unionize before the army of $12/hour programmers arrives then what you are claiming is that software development could be done by someone who was trained and willing to accept $12 per hour. Essentially you are making the claim they…

This is very close to my thinking.

I've joked before that, in order for a tech union drive to work, it would have to be recast as some sort of medieval-guild-style exploitation of secret knowledge power-play/conspiracy to get the libertarians on board.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#95

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:38 PM UTC

dkhenry wrote: post #89

wfo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are smart, they should: right now they have a lot of power in the workplace because there is demand for them. This is a problem tech business owners have identified: programmers have too much power on the job relative to their bosses. They require good wages, they require too many benefits, they complain and sue when they are sexually harassed, they demand equity and to be treated well and refuse to accept th…

Your comment shows the real divide on unionization and its not about someone's political ideology, its fundamentally about how they view the profession. If like you said programmers should unionize before the army of $12/hour programmers arrives then what you are claiming is that software development could be done by someone who was trained and willing to accept $12 per hour. Essentially you are making the claim they…

Absolutely the most common objection to labor organization is that it's something associated intrinsically with low-status commodified occupations.

But that's a fallacy. Most of the classic professions are organized. They're usually organized around professional associations and not "labor unions", and their collective bargaining concerns things other than their wages. But those are distinctions without differences.

Yes, tech workers aren't going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's an easy question to put to rest. But that doesn't dispose of the issue. Tech workers should organize, now, when their market power is at its zenith. There's a good discussion to have about what the resulting organizations look like.

But there's less of a tenable argument about whether they should try at all. Clearly, it seems to me, they should.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#96

Post by chimeracoder » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #85

chimeracoder wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The NLRA broadly protects any concerted action involving two or more employees to improve any workplace condition or term of employment. You do not have to be in a "union" with "shop rules" and collective wage bargaining to take advantage of it. I'm aware - but again, that wasn't the original question of this thread.

It seems silly to confine the question to Teamster-style unions. You want the answer to that? No, tech workers are not going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's not the important question. The important question is, will tech workers organize, and, when they do, what will that organization look like? That's a question we can speculate productively about.

> It seems silly to confine the question to Teamster-style unions. You want the answer to that? No, tech workers are not going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's not the important question. The important question is, will tech workers organize, and, when they do, what will that organization look like? That's a question we can speculate productively about.

Any union that derives its authority from the NLRA and is overseen by the NLRB will eventually end up looking like the AFL-CIO, SEIU, etc. We have decades of experimentation done by other unions with other organizational structures - all of which have failed - testifying to that.

Most professional organizations do not derive their authority or power from the NLRA at all. The activities that they take, as organizations, are outside the scope of the NLRA. Put another way: if the NLRA vanished overnight, they would still operate in the same way, as evidenced by the fact that many of the largest and most successful professional organizations predate the NLRA by decades. The same is not true of most labor unions which derive their power from the NLRA - even the few surviving ones that predated the NLRA restructured in its wake.

The fact that the NLRA protects some employee activity in non-unionized workforces is true, but it isn't particularly relevant to answering the question "do you think tech-workers will begin to unionize?", because the professional organizations that you introduced to the discussion do not require the NLRA to function as they do today.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#97

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

tedunangst wrote: post #90

tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Organized labor has most of the same problems as organized ownership and capital. Ownership and capital has some unique problems. Labor has some other unique problems. This shouldn't surprise anyone. Unless you're arguing for the elimination of the market system, "this structure in a market economy is prone to corruption" isn't a dispositive argument, or really an argument at all.

Labor seems to have some unique "challenges" that don't affect other organizations. If I buy a Dodge, nobody from Ford is going to come slash my tires. If I hire a non-union electrician, well, maybe my house burns down. "Shoddy craftsmanship", right? Always hire union to be safe. If anybody is arguing for the elimination of the market system, I'd start by looking at the unions.

This is approximately as rigorous an analysis as suggesting that if you hire an Italian, his mob buddies might come by later on to shake you down for protection money. How many AMA members have slashed the tires of a noncompliant doctor?

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#98

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #96

tptacek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems silly to confine the question to Teamster-style unions. You want the answer to that? No, tech workers are not going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's not the important question. The important question is, will tech workers organize, and, when they do, what will that organization look like? That's a question we can speculate productively about.

> It seems silly to confine the question to Teamster-style unions. You want the answer to that? No, tech workers are not going to create the Tech Teamsters. That's not the important question. The important question is, will tech workers organize, and, when they do, what will that organization look like? That's a question we can speculate productively about. Any union that derives its authority from the NLRA and is ov…

No, the NLRA doesn't protect "some employee activity" in "non-unionized workforces". The core elements of the law that enable "unions" are available to enable any workplace organization of any form. It's deeply misleading to suggest that a group of employees availing themselves of the protections of the NLRA are putting themselves on a slippery slope to becoming the Teamsters.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#99

Post by curun1r » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:42 PM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #59

dkhenry wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope not. I see tech-workers as professionals not as laborers. I think the great battle to be fought by tech workers is to stop having them treated as common laborers that perform some kind of rote process. Some times we call software development engineering, and if thats the case I would press anyone to show me an engineering discipline that parallels software engineering in terms of working conditions and r…

Actors and writers are not laborers either and they're also competing against the "crapification" of their industry driven by execs trying to undercut them (e.g. reality TV).

Add athletes to the list. The unions in the various professional sports leagues also provide an interesting model that still allows individual negotiation within the scope of the collective bargaining agreements. I could imagine a tech workers union negotiating a collective bargaining agreement covering non-competes, intellectual property concerns, working conditions and other such universal concerns while protecting our ability to differentiate ourselves from our coworkers.

Re: Organizers have unionized 5,000 contract workers at Apple, Facebook, Yahoo

#100

Post by dkhenry » Thu, Sep 14, 2017, 3:47 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #95

dkhenry wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment shows the real divide on unionization and its not about someone's political ideology, its fundamentally about how they view the profession. If like you said programmers should unionize before the army of $12/hour programmers arrives then what you are claiming is that software development could be done by someone who was trained and willing to accept $12 per hour. Essentially you are making the claim they…

Absolutely the most common objection to labor organization is that it's something associated intrinsically with low-status commodified occupations. But that's a fallacy. Most of the classic professions are organized. They're usually organized around professional associations and not "labor unions", and their collective bargaining concerns things other than their wages. But those are distinctions without differences.…

organizations are very different from labor unions. I think software engineering would be well served by a professional association, but they have the problem of having deep connections to higher education institutions and licensing boards. I don't think our industry would be well served by the same kind of educational gate keeping that limits the availability of Doctors and Lawyers ( like what the NSPE, or IEEE try to push )